PvE Mage status and redundancy?

Just wondering if Mage still has it's advantages compared to other classes.
Historically, Mage was (besides Rogue) the class with the most utility, also locks had their starlight hours with different boss tank-applications and selfheal and so on. Hunter was at that time a little less useful, I give you that.
And then the game developed over time, a lot of changing was done to talent systems and new classes were added, all speccs and classes are made viable in a raid environment and so on.
But now, if I look at the overall "balance", I feel like that pure DPS classes suffered. Sure, comparing DPS simcraft over the time, it's still mostly that "pure" dps classes have at least one specc that is in the top10, at least for patchwerk fights, but in a real raid environment, considering that all classes can do roughly the same dps, it comes down to utility and "gimmicks", why you would want to bring certain classes.
It's been very popular for a while in progress guilds, and it's called "class stacking".

And now, why would you stack a class? Mostly, because it can do something in particular better than all the other classes. For exemple multi-dotting for moonkins, shadows and affi locks. Or (if we remember spine) burst stacking with retribution palas or arcane mages. Having the appriopriate tank is also very important. Death knights make a lot of fights so much easier, some other block tanks (warri/pala) also had their spot. And when it comes to healers, it's the same. Resto druids solo-healing Ragnaros HC in 10m, or Discipline-Priests and Paladins, it just matters what are the strenghs and weaknesses of every specc.

Now I want you to consider MoP and Mages. Sure, DPS wise, we are at the Top (in simcraft patchwerk 5min fights), but in raids, it's not that clear cut. Sure, in 25m, when there's not a lot of movement and other tasks, Mages are still in a good place. But in 10m, when it comes down more to personal utility and play, it's not that clear cut.
Mage has practically no self-heal or healing cd to help out the healers (compare hybrids like moonkin or shadow or elemental shaman heal cds...), reducing his abilitys in a raid to either DPS or Crowd Control (if needed). Sure, many other classes are in the "same" boat here. How about Mage dmg-reduction talents? Every Melee has something like shildwall now (anti magic bubble, cloak, bubble etc), hunters have disengage and locks have now a lot of active defense too, shadows dispersion druid symbiosys(dispersion) and so on.
So Mage with Iceblock is not unique anymore (someone remember iceblock-pulls in vanilla molten core?!?), he is just along the line with others. (Or worse, considering that a lot of dmg sources in raid now hit through iceblock but are still reduced by lets say dispersion (gara'jal voodoo dolls for example).
So what about Mage control than? There are rarely raid encounters where control does play a role, but they exist. Nefarian, the skeletal constructs. Firelands, beth'tilac, a lot of adds to slow and bomb. Or now, HoF, grand-empress Shek'zeer. Phase two, you need to slow and kite the small adds. But what slows does Mage really have now? Sure, frostbolt, a single target nuke. (apparently useless). Ring of Frost, quite useful if you've seen 25m heroic Will of Emperor videos, but only works if you don't need kill the adds at some point. And thats the point. Mages do not have much CC which is useful when you need to afflict damage to the targets. Cone of cold, 6sec short range slow, not very good and requires melee range. And thats it.
Now lets compare Rogues, Dks, Warriors, they cleave, they slow, they stun, all at the same time and doing max dmg. Druids with Vortex/knockback bring utility too. They also have a taunt, which can be really useful at times. Hunter's kite abilitys are ofc superb, freezing trap and stuff like that is really usefull.

Now, the problem with multi-dotting. Mage has 3 DPS speccs, but none is considered "dot-specc". Sure, every specc has a mage-bomb now, and fire has its ignite and pyro-dots, so you might argue that it's at least a hybrid dot specc. But, compared to real "multi-dotters", Mage is still considered sup-standard, except for when he can spread his dmg from a main-target to off-targets.
And that's the only viable space I see for mages right now, and it's only with (unfortunately) rnd dependant fire specc. Why on hell would someone take frost or arcane mages to a raid, or even a fire mage? (if he has an equally-skilled alternative class player at hand of course) Mage burst is only a ramp-up burst now with high-ignite-combustion, nothing like demo lock/elemental/druid/bm hunter instant unloading their dmg. Frost and arcane are both stable, non-dot-dependent-DPS, which is really useless. In a raid, you either need multi-dots/cleave or burst DPS, thats why those two speccs are useless. Fire is more spiky which means better, but still very rnd dependand (which is also bad because of lack of consistency)
Also, mages used to be a very mobile class, but now with the LvL 90 talents, our mobility is really crap. So I wonder, why would someone give a Mage 3 DPS specc, which are basically the same considering DPS burst/mobility and utility? Why not more diversity?

I check a lot of progress 10m raiding guilds, and rarely a mage is being found in the top40 guilds, and if, he is often benched for the first-kills. I'm also in contact with many top-guilds, and they confirm that mage isn't of much use besides ok-DPS right now. Of 11 classes (and 34 speccs), Mage apparently is the most redundant and easiest to bench for whatever the encounter demands.
It's like we've lost most of your unique benefits over time while other classes gained more and more. I don't want mage to be the best at everything, don't get me wrong, I just would like to see that a mage has more use in a raid than just making plain DPS with every specc he's got. I mean, why not making fire multi-dot? Or arcane more burst-cd again? Or give frost more kite/control? It's done for other pure DPS classes as well. Rogue has a burst, a cleave and a dot specc. Warlock has a multi-dot, a burst (demo) and a "normal" caster specc. Hunter has a pet, a CC and a Dot specc.
Everything a mage has is fire, which is half-burst/half dot, and frost/arcane, which is useless.

It's been quite a long read now, so I wonder if some of you might feel similar, or if you have another view on the "big picture" of mage status in PvE?

Just a few pointers, my raid takes me as a Frost mage because I can easily put 10k dps more than anyone else there. As for self-heals, I keep Ice Barrier up as much as I can and have evocation glyphed, I am by far the person taking least damage. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

---------- Post added 2012-11-04 at 04:54 PM ----------

Now lets compare Rogues, Dks, Warriors, they cleave, they slow, they stun, all at the same time and doing max dmg.

I guess you have no idea what you are talking about. When you do 10k more dps as frostmage than everyone else, than it clearly states that all DPS in your raid are shit. So maybe just stfu if you have no idea what you are talking about.

I guess you have no idea what you are talking about. When you do 10k more dps as frostmage than everyone else, than it clearly states that all DPS in your raid are shit. So maybe just stfu if you have no idea what you are talking about.

Maybe the context of my long post was to complicated, so I'll sum it up quickly.
Mage DPS is fine overall, but thats all Mage got. In heroic raiding (and I'm 6/6 HC right now and usually top 30-50 world 10m), mage has no specific "gimmick" to succeed. Lets say like multi-dotting on Will of Emperor HC. Thats why out of the Top20 10man guilds, only 7 Mages were there by the first kills, while it was for example 28 druids or 26 paladin or 21 warlocks.
So thats what I'm saying, Mage is the least presented class (together with shaman and rogue, who is also not so popular obviously) in endgame-raiding, and that is a fact.

Actually not, Arcane Mages were very fine for Spine HC in deathwing raid, also had there place in ragnaros HC p3. Also mages were quite good at putting the fires out in ragnaros HC p4, because of blink +sprint.
There was also Alyzrazor where fire-mages where outstanding in DPS because of crazy combustions. And thats just a few in cataclysm, there were some more where mages were really good and useful.
But now in MoP, you can play every raid without a mage and you would not suffer, you might also profit from the substituted classes (as many of them bring much to the table)

What I'm talking about is mostly 10-man related, in 25man raids this is a different story ofcourse, thats how those raid-sizes work. (A tranquility from a moonkin is much more powerful raid-cd in 10 man compared to 25 man for example)

please don't make this a 10 vs 25 discussion thread.
And I do not think that you can accurate judge the situation, you make a lot less DPS in 25man than every player in my 10m guild, including everyone of the 3 mages we have.
Here you can have a WoL from today to compare http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/94wgtektl4dv2tr8/
The truth is, even with our very skilled raid and players, we can not really afford to bring more than 1 Mage to any encounter except for spirit kings, and if no Mage is in the setup, the raid isn't hurt at all. But if your moonkin or warlock or shadow is missing, it gets really hard or next to impossible to beat some "farm" bosses. (and for first kills, we really have to put them in the raid)

Arcane and Frost are both very reliable on Sparks for Elegon.

On heroic, the sparks have a lot more health and frost/arcane does really underwhelming overall boss dmg. But i guess that there, it does not make a difference what specc you choose. (at least frost seems to do pretty decent also)

please don't make this a 10 vs 25 discussion thread.
And I do not think that you can accurate judge the situation, you make a lot less DPS in 25man than every player in my 10m guild, including everyone of the 3 mages we have.
Here you can have a WoL from today to compare http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/94wgtektl4dv2tr8/
The truth is, even with our very skilled raid and players, we can not really afford to bring more than 1 Mage to any encounter except for spirit kings, and if no Mage is in the setup, the raid isn't hurt at all. But if your moonkin or warlock or shadow is missing, it gets really hard or next to impossible to beat some "farm" bosses. (and for first kills, we really have to put them in the raid)

On heroic, the sparks have a lot more health and frost/arcane does really underwhelming overall boss dmg. But i guess that there, it does not make a difference what specc you choose. (at least frost seems to do pretty decent also)

Allright, lets say that I agree that given the current state of things high-end 10 man raids may prefer not to take mages. So what? Unless you are trying to get into such a team it doesn't matter, mages are doing pretty well. Elite teams that go for world/realm firsts have always stacked classes when beneficial. For the rest of the playerbase, mages are doing just fine. But you make it sound as if the class was broken which is far from, and that's what gets some people defensive (incl. myself).

On an unrelated note, you see way more parses for Fire mages than Frost because that is the popular choice, and not because Frost is not competitive.

please don't make this a 10 vs 25 discussion thread.
And I do not think that you can accurate judge the situation, you make a lot less DPS in 25man than every player in my 10m guild, including everyone of the 3 mages we have.
Here you can have a WoL from today to compare http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/94wgtektl4dv2tr8/

Are you locoqt or reasorine out of interest?(Guessing Reasorine as Locoqt is frost) Just looking at your logs of Wind lord and Amber Shaper and comparing Top 100 guild Mages against myself and safe to say - I'm not really impressed. For example, Wind Lord - My combustion usage was 'meh' and my general play overall when we killed it yet I still pulled 140k+ on it (30k more than yourself). I can see several flaws and things that could be improved, 2 Combustions in a 7:33 fight is atrocious and needs to be fixed - same with 70% uptime on Living Bomb. Also, as being in a Top 100 guild, I do question as to why you chose Incanter's over Invocation?

Mages bring good damage and some decent survivability CD's. For example, Alter Time isn't just a DPS cooldown - I used it during Rain of Blades along with Temporal Shield on Wind Lord and saved my healers time/mana.

I also realise this post may offend you - If it does I apologise and didn't mean it to - I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in and also a couple suggestions I spotted whilst comparing.

It may also be worth noting that mage cleave damage on 2-3 targets can be fairly impressive as Fire, and on 2 targets as Frost.
Rogues are obviously ahead but they require melee range, Mages can DoT up targets and then cleave with either Inferno Blast/Combustion or Ice Lance (two targets also allows a Frost mage to generate additional Fingers of Frost charges for more overall Ice Lances).

They are also good in that they can bring either a 90% damage reduction cooldown or a death immunity cooldown, which can be good for dealing with certain mechanics (though not many I can think of in this tier, Invis > Ice Block > Invis is helpful on Rain of Blades).

please don't make this a 10 vs 25 discussion thread.
And I do not think that you can accurate judge the situation, you make a lot less DPS in 25man than every player in my 10m guild, including everyone of the 3 mages we have.
Here you can have a WoL from today to compare http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/94wgtektl4dv2tr8/
The truth is, even with our very skilled raid and players, we can not really afford to bring more than 1 Mage to any encounter except for spirit kings, and if no Mage is in the setup, the raid isn't hurt at all. But if your moonkin or warlock or shadow is missing, it gets really hard or next to impossible to beat some "farm" bosses. (and for first kills, we really have to put them in the raid)

On heroic, the sparks have a lot more health and frost/arcane does really underwhelming overall boss dmg. But i guess that there, it does not make a difference what specc you choose. (at least frost seems to do pretty decent also)

lol what
1 of your mage's (locoqt) vs mine
HM Stone guard : 126k / 207k
Feng: 55k / 84k
gar: 66k/ 98.88k
Spirit Kings: 72k/80k
Elegon: 132k/149.9k
Will: 61k/71k
Not to mention my parses are higher, so uhh yeah. You guys may be in a good guild, but you guys aren't the highest performing mages.
I can see why you have the idea in your head that you're a top mage ( because you're in a top guild or whatever, but individual performances speak for themselves.) the class isn't broken, maybe you are doing something wrong. because im probably not even as geared as your mages, but im doing higher dps.
Since you try to make this a personal attack on my dps, I'll step it up a notch and say you read numbers almost as bad as you type, boom roasted.
O and don't try to say my dps is higher because it is in a 25m raid environment, even then, we'll go by parse percentile, in which case my parses are still higher. lessons will be 1500g/hour, nonrefundable.

Allright, lets say that I agree that given the current state of things high-end 10 man raids may prefer not to take mages. So what? Unless you are trying to get into such a team it doesn't matter, mages are doing pretty well. Elite teams that go for world/realm firsts have always stacked classes when beneficial. For the rest of the playerbase, mages are doing just fine. But you make it sound as if the class was broken which is far from, and that's what gets some people defensive (incl. myself).

Yeah, broken is a tough word, and might not be particulary accurate for the state mages are in. Maybe it just sucks that we don't excell at something anymore (at least it appears to me that way), and having 3 speccs while none has anything special to offer just frustrates me, since I've been playing Mage since vanilla. I'd like to see arcane being made viable, at least on occasion. And that frost brings something special to the table as well, though orb+frostbomb is great at many targets, sustained dmg dropps hard after 10s AoE. Why not making frostmages THE AoE/Cleave specc? Like demo lock? And arcane single target high burst again. Fire is the only specc I feel is in place with part burst/part dot/part cleave.

On an unrelated note, you see way more parses for Fire mages than Frost because that is the popular choice, and not because Frost is not competitive.

That is true, but for heroics, the most popular choice is most likely the best choice for a given encounter. I've also tryed different speccs at all bosses, but still returned to fire because if it's major benefits.

lol what
1 of your mage's (locoqt) vs mine
HM Stone guard : 126k / 207k
Feng: 55k / 84k
gar: 66k/ 98.88k
Spirit Kings: 72k/80k
Elegon: 132k/149.9k
Will: 61k/71k
Not to mention my parses are higher, so uhh yeah. You guys may be in a good guild, but you guys aren't the highest performing mages.
I can see why you have the idea in your head that you're a top mage ( because you're in a top guild or whatever, but individual performances speak for themselves.) the class isn't broken, maybe you are doing something wrong. because im probably not even as geared as your mages, but im doing higher dps.

Ehm maybe you should not compare HC with non-HC. You totally read the logs wrong otherwise I can not explain how you could even imagine such things...
Will of Emperor HEROIC World rank 6http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/u...&e=7786#Locoqt
"our underperforming mage"

and I've looked at you parses blugatti, you do not have any good rank in your category except for LFR, and seriously, who makes parses for LFR? LFR Stoneguard our mages pull like 250k dps....
and if I look at your "best" rankingshttp://worldoflogs.com/guilds/34022/rankings/players/http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ts...=3426#Blugatti 116k on elegon LFR is the best place you have ever logged so far.... so I don't know from where you pull your numbers...
I don't want to be too harsh or anything, but maybe you should not bash other mages (especially when there is a lot of proof that they are doing decent in progressing and World of Logs), when everything seen from you (and most of your guildies) is just really poor dps.